


True Gold

by gotatheory



Series: OQ Prompt Party 2018 [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Outlaw Queen, F/M, OQ Prompt Party 2018, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 17:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14061615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotatheory/pseuds/gotatheory
Summary: Robin goes on a heist and comes back with a little more than Regina expected.





	True Gold

**Author's Note:**

> Day Four of OQ Prompt Party 2018. For the prompt: 118. OQ steal a baby (intentionally, unintentionally, whatever.)
> 
> Stealth crossover with Avatar: The Last Airbender because why not.

He’s been gone for three days, and she shouldn’t be worried. That shouldn’t be who she is, someone who _worries_ about another person just because they’re gone for seventy-two hours. She doesn’t have a watch, not in this realm, and yet she looks at her wrist anyway, even though her internal clock helpfully reminds it’s been at least eighty-four hours, if she’s counting.

She is definitely counting, much to her frustration, and Cora’s voice is a refrain in her head. _Love is weakness, Regina, love is weakness_ , over and over, even as she tries to shut it out. She’s got all this love now thanks to her other half, except that’s not true — even as the Evil Queen, she’s always had this, she just boxed it up better. Now, she doesn’t know how to contain it.

Which means standing on the balcony of her room, _their_ room, looking out upon the grounds, trying to spot his horse. He went with a few of the Merry Men, and they haven’t returned either, but she’s most concerned about her husband. (She’s still not perfect, even with the other Regina’s goodness mixed inside of her.)

He should have been back by now, and every minute that he’s not just increases her anxiety.

She scans the horizon, looking for any sort of sign — there! She sees it, a horse and then another, and then… nothing.

Her heart seizes in her chest, and she’s flying out of the room, inadvertently using magic to speed her to the courtyard.

She meets Tuck and Alan at the gate, her blood rushing in her ears, and this is ridiculous, she is not this person, she should never be this person. The first word out of her mouth is Robin’s name, a desperate cry for her soulmate, and Tuck and Alan share a nervous look.

“Where is he?” she demands in a voice more in line with her Evil Queen persona. “What happened?”

“We told him not to do it, Regina,” Tuck says, the first one brave enough to speak, and then he’s hopping down from his horse, and leading him away.

With more space between the horses, she can see a third slowly ambling up the path, her heart leaping into her throat as she spots Robin astride him. Maybe later she will feel embarrassed about the way she races toward him, but now all that matters is getting to him, seeing that he’s all right.

What she sees stops her in her tracks.

He’s got something bundled in his arm, loosely holding onto the horse’s reins with one hand while the other clutches the bundle of blankets to his chest. He’s cooing at it, whatever it is, hasn’t even glanced up at her until she’s frozen in front of him.

“Robin,” she breathes out, relieved and disbelieving, heart thundering in her ears as she takes him in as well as the squirmy mass in his arms. “What did you do?”

“Hi, Your Majesty,” he smiles at her, biting his bottom lip and revealing just how nervous he is. “I might have stolen a baby.”

She stares at him, coming closer so that he can hand the bundle — the _child_ , he _stole_ a child — to her before dismounting his horse. She looks down at the baby in her arms, studying the tiny face looking up at her. “Baby” is perhaps a bit of an underestimation of the child’s age; he looks to be about two or three years old, by her best guess. He has pale skin, a tuft of jet black hair, and his golden eyes look up at her with drowsy curiosity for a moment before closing, settling back into slumber.

“Robin,” Regina finally says, looking up from the child to her husband. “What were you _thinking_? How could you steal a baby?”

Robin has the decency to look sheepish, even as he defends his actions with, “You weren’t there, Regina. I watched this man with his son for a day, and he barely interacted with him at all. He had a nanny for him that cared more about pilfering his fine silver than I did.”

For a moment, Regina doesn’t recognize the man standing before her. He fought her tooth and nail over including Roland in their lives, because he insisted he hated children, couldn’t bear the thought of raising one. And though she realized that wasn’t entirely true, once she had introduced Roland to the man who looked like his father but wasn’t, she knew Robin didn’t consider him the best person to be around children.

All that, and yet here he is, looking at a toddler in her arms with an expression so soft and paternal.

Affection swells her heart, and though she says, “His father might come looking for him,” she knows it doesn’t matter. She might not know that look on this particular Robin, but she remembers it from the other Robin. Can see it for what it is: the love of a father, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

It doesn’t even surprise her when he counters fervently, “I won’t let that bastard Ozai take him back, just to treat him as an heir instead of a child.”

Robin doesn’t speak much about his past, but Regina knows this much, and suddenly his desire to rescue this particular child makes sense. So much so that she smiles, glancing down at the little one still asleep in her arms.

“Does he have a name?” she asks.

He nods and tells her, “He does. Zuko. But I’ve been calling him something else in my head, because… Well, if we’re going to keep him, he’ll need a different name than his real one, yeah?”

“What did you come up with, then?” she inquires with a little smirk, far too amused that he’s gone so far as to come up with a whole new name for the child.

“Lee,” he says with a little shrug, sheepish, but she recognizes the significance.

Robin doesn’t speak much about his parents, a trait he shared with his counterpart. But he’s spoken about his mother, about her name while he explained his tattoo to her. Leona.

“But if you’d prefer something else—”

“No. I like it.” She smiles up at him, even reaches for his hand and squeezes in reassurance. “Now. How about we introduce Roland to his new little brother?”


End file.
